This informative article was written by Allison Dampier, school director of Advantages Online Private School .
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The first step in school improvement is to set high expectations of your students and children. Most of the time, we get what we expect from people. It is no different for kids. This is so important to remember when discussing education. Every child benefits from someone who believes in him.
The Pygmalion effect is commonly referred to as the “teacher-expectancy effect” and it refers to situations that students perform better simply because they are expected to do so. The effect is named after the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, in which a professor makes a bet that he can teach a poor girl to speak and act like an upper class lady. He was successful. We get what we expect out of people.
Robert Rosenthal conducted a study of the Pygmalion effect, in which teachers were led to expect improved performance from certain children. Unbeknownst to the teachers, the children’s names were drawn randomly. Yet, those children’s academic abilities did indeed improve. In some cases, the improvement was nearly twice as much as other students in the same class. Rosenthal’s study claimed reality can be influenced by the expectations of others.
Teachers expectations and assumptions about their students’ potential has a definite effect on their performance. Research “clearly establishes that teacher expectations do play a significant role in determining how well and how much students learn,” (Bamburg, 1994). Students tend to give what teachers expect of them. Students “rise or fall to the level of expectation of their teachers…When teachers believe in students, students believe in themselves. When those you respect think you can, YOU think you can,” (Raffini, 1993).
This goes for parents as well. We need to expect a great deal out of our kids and let them know we believe in them. To expect less is a great disservice, not a favor.
The biggest challenge facing our school system is personalizing the classroom, so that a teacher’s expectations make a difference to the students. When teachers know their students, and the students feel as if their teacher knows and cares about them, the expectations will make a difference. The question is, how can this occur when high school teachers have over 40 kids in a class? There is something to be said about homeschooling, and the new wave of schooling-at-home. In those situations, the teachers know their students, care about their progress, and completely personalize the educational experience.
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Advantages Online Private School is the answer for students on the move. Offerings at Advantages include middle and high school curriculums that are aligned with national standards for college acceptance as well as test prep courses SAT, ACT, CaHSEE and Algebra Readiness. Advantages is accredited through Northwest Association of Accredited Schools (NAAS), one of the six acknolwedged regional accreditation agencies in the United States.